Bringing Nature Home

This is the  reason for my lack of posts in the last couple of months. I've been hard at work putting my book together. Bringing Home Nature will be published by Rizzoli next April. I just went over the first proofs with the book designer, and everything looks great, with some minor adjustments. It's been a long haul, but the end is finally in sight. I'm looking forward to holding the actual book in my hands.

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from the foreword written by Deborah Needleman, which sums up the idea of the book:

Ngoc’s book is a sonnet to the seasons. It rejoices in the beauties particular to each, and to the immense joy to be had from paying witness to those changes, and of bringing its fruits into the home. That is the message of this book, made abundantly clear through Ngoc’s text and the effect of her poetic photographs. But underlying that, her pictures also reveal her expansive appreciation for the variety of ways flowers have been used in different cultures and times in history. 

Only Love and Then Oblivion

World Trade Center & Lower Manhattan from Empire State, January 1973
Photo by Jonathan Barker

"There is only love, and then oblivion."
Ian McEwan, writing in the Guardian on September 15, 2001

The Necessity of Beauty

"Beauty's dynamic is not perfect or ideal. It is subject to the same logos of death, decay and transformation as all creation. Who would Persephone, a lovely girl-goddess of spring be without her husband Hades, a silly maiden with flowers in her hair? Her real beauty, the necessity of the occasion of her beauty requires her to spend fall and winter in the underworld loving her husband and weaving the threads of destiny. Necessary beauty has character, gravitas, sorrow, comedy and joy. Beauty without gravity may be a decorous ruse. Beauty without shadow is probably an illusion, and beauty without vitality a trap. Beauty may be stark but never vain, and joy may emerge as sorrow's final cry."

"The Necessity of Beauty"

Tom Jay

A wonderful essay on beauty, a subject that is much on my mind these days as I finish my book.

Photograph of chrysanthemums taken for the book this morning.

Night Sky

Milky Way viewed from Death Valley
Mikly Way viewed from Lava Beds National Monument

Photographs by the Night Sky Team

"We human beings lose something of ourselves when we can no longer look up and see our place in the universe."

David Crawford of the International Dark-Sky Association, from a must read article on light pollution and the efforts to keep the night sky unimpaired in our national parks.

A Dahlia

Un Dahlia

Paul Verlaine

Courtisane au sein dur, à l'oeil opaque et brun

S'ouvrant avec lenteur comme celui d'un boeuf,

Ton grand torse reluit ainsi qu'un marbre neuf.

Fleur grasse et riche, autour de toi ne flotte aucun

Arôme, et la beauté séreine de ton corps

Déroule, mate, ses impeccables accords.

Tu ne sens même pas la chair, ce goût qu'au moins

Exhalent celles-là qui vont fanant les foins,

Et tu trônes, Idole insensible à l'encens.

Ainsi le Dahlia, roi vêtu du splendeur,

Elève sans orgueil, sa tête sans odeur,

Irritant au milieu des jasmins agaçants!

There is no satisfactory English translation of this poem (at least not that I know of), which reminds me of how impossibly difficult to translate from one language to another. Verlaine's description of a dahlia, the metaphoric flower-woman, is full of rancor. The poem reflects Verlaine's bitterness in the failure of his relationship with his first love, Elisa. His barely contained misogyny is projected into nature, into the guise of the dahlia, an opulent beauty without perfume.

I like the alternating tercets addressed to the courtisan/woman (1 and 3) and to the flower (2 and 4) an interesting structure, something that the two translations I read completely ignored.

The world is so vast

Wild lupines, Norfolk, Connecticut
Frangipani tree, Key West
Palm Beach
Bay Bridge, San Francisco
São Paulo
Paraty, Brazil
Ipanema, Rio de Jainero
Paraty, Brazil
Paraty, Brazil

"I must leave the bonds that kept me confined, and move elsewhere. Move on, move on, move on. Move like the waterfall, like the ocean waves, like the birds at down, like the light at sunrise. That is why the world is so vast, the earth so extraordinary, the sky so infinite... That is why the call of death is nothing but the same call to change one's abode."

Rabindranath Tagore, "Travel"

This is how I used to feel when I was young. I lived in different countries, made my home in different continents, always moving on. Now that I am older, I want to attach myself to a small piece of the earth, to cultivate my garden, and to find what T. S. Eliot so eloquently calls "a still point of a turning world." But the life that I have carved out for myself keeps me moving. These are just some of the places I've been in the last couple of months.

The re-enchantment of flowers

I've been too busy to post anything lately, but here is a blogpost about me on Martha Stewart Weddings website.